


you face your end with your eyes wide open (and you smile all the while)

by Garecc, Gunpowderdtim (Garecc)



Series: Ready, Aim, Fire [26]
Category: The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: (ie ivy ashes and nastya), Canon-Typical Behavior, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Character Death, Death, Death to the Mechanisms Spoilers, Explosions, Explosives, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Jonny Is Here As Well But Alot Less, Jonny cries at one point if you want implied sad jonny read this, Marius also dies, Minor Character Death, Minor Jonny & Tim Friendship, Mythology References, Past Character Death, Suicide, Suicide Attempt, War, also bertie referenced death, suicide planning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-16
Updated: 2020-10-16
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:02:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27048403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Garecc/pseuds/Garecc, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Garecc/pseuds/Gunpowderdtim
Summary: In which Gunpowder Tim realizes that the Mechansims are dying, and he really, really,reallydoesn't want to be the last one alive.So he does the logical thing, and chooses to die.
Series: Ready, Aim, Fire [26]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1799860
Comments: 7
Kudos: 57





	you face your end with your eyes wide open (and you smile all the while)

**Author's Note:**

> This is a suicide fic. The entire fic is Tim planning his death. MIND THE TAGS.

In facing his end, Tim knows himself to be a coward.

Ivy was dead.

They didn't even have a body to send off, to bury, to throw into a star.

They didn't have anything but the memories to send her off.

They held a funeral of a sort. A gathering. They shared memories, stories, anecdotes.

They cried.

And she was gone. Nothing but memories. Nothing but thousand year old dents she made in the walls and her meticulously organized archive. Nothing but her notes in the margins of books.

Nothing but a million tiny marks she left behind.

She was gone.

His friend of thousands of years gone. Just like that.

Tim wasn’t a stranger to grief, far from it.

He’d started his immortality with nothing but grief. Grief for Bertie. Grief of everyone he condemned. Grief for his entire civilization.

He knew grief.

When Nastya threw herself into the stars, they had grieved, all of them. 

They hadn’t had a funeral, because Jonny was all sharp knives and edges. All screaming and yelling and shattered pieces of glass. “She’ll come back.” He said again and again. “She has to come back.” 

And Tim, for so long indulged in that hope as well.

That tantalizing what-if.

She could come back.

She could show up during a show and they would welcome her with open arms.

Welcome her back with hugs and tears.

But at the news of Ivy’s death, it was almost like saying goodbye to both of them.

Because if Ivy died to something as simple as a fire, then Nastya was _certainly_ dead in space.

Tim knew grief, but this was a new kind.

They were supposed to be forever. 

Thats why they were immortal. They weren’t supposed to _die._ They weren’t _supposed to leave him._

No one was _ever_ supposed to die and leave him again. Never again.

He was never supposed to lose someone he loved so dearly again.

He had dared to feel safe. Dared to trust there wasn't anything that could permanently take his family.

He’d dared to trust it. 

But a simple fire took Ivy. 

Merely the void took Nastya.

And Tim knew he was facing The End.

That he was on the final chapter of his life, every moment another word towards the final page, towards the final word.

_It terrified him_.

Ashes went next.

Vanished without a trace.

They had been helping Raph with an experiment while Tim “helped”, but really he was just trying to get a fire hot enough to melt some glass.

There had been a loud bang that sent him and Raph sprawling, and then Ashes was gone.

There one moment, gone the next.

They had looked, looked and searched for hundreds of years. 

But with Ivy dead, and Nastya assumed so, eventually the idea of Ashes being dead was brought up.

Jonny had hissed and spit, yelling that _Ashes was not dead. We just need to find them._ But the others shared a look, and Jonny stormed out.

But they didn't know, not for certain.

It didnt exactly stop then from holding another funeral. 

Jonny sulked in the corner, shaking a bit. He didn't say anything, drawing his gun if you talked to him. Looking all the world like any moment he'd finally break and shatter.

If his eyeliner was running everywhere, no one mentioned it.

He and Ashes had always been very close.

Not long after, Brian had a vision. 

Ashes died, and they were the brightest thing in the universe, for just a moment.

Jonny had started laughing, and he hadn’t been able to stop. Even when the laugher became sobs, and he learned against Aurora, shaking and laughing and sobbing.

They stayed with him, even when he shot Raph. Even when he tried to kill all of them. Tim snatched his gun, and without it, Jonny just curled up and sobbed.

(Of the original five, Carmilla's Pre-Brian crew, it was just him now.

Carmilla to her own decision to go, Nastya to the airlock, Ivy to a fire.

Ashes to who knows what.)

Eventually, Tim pulled Jonny to his feet. And when Jonny was too unsteady to stand, Brian picked him up. 

They brought him to his room. Forced him to lay down, both of them hugging him.

Jonny properly fell apart then, and they just held him.

Jonny just sobbed.

With Ashes’s death confirmed, Tim was terrified. 

He’d been the last alive once already. He _didn't_ want to be again.

He had sat in the Kaiser’s life pod for so, so, so long. He’d known he was the last alive. He’d known he was going to die entirely alone.

The Last One Standing.

A modern Achilles they had called him in the tunnels.

But he didn't die.

He didn't die like the man they likened him to.

He just lived.

And destroyed.

And then he'd been the last alive. The last standing. The final human. 

Well, he’d been about to die. Then Doc C found him, picked him up, and he was fairly certain he’d died in her arms.

It haunted him.

Being The Last.

Being the final one alive.

Looking at his ending, Tim made a choice.

He wasn't going to be the last.

He wasn't going to watch everyone die until he was alone again.

He wasn't going to be The Last.

So Tim started planning his death. 

He’d go out with a bang. An explosion. His body torn apart by the force in an instant.

No pain.

No slow death of say, infection.

No agonizing injuries.

No panic.

Just death.

A violent, quick, death.

He had just the planet in mind.

During the transit, Tim noticed his eyes were refusing to focus.

That decimating the targets in as few bullets as possible was getting harder as it grew more difficult to aim. 

A thousand-year-old ache growing more acute, the stabbing pains that had slowly stopped over the millennia returned. 

Tim could feel his end creeping closer.

During the transit, Marius died.

It was sudden. 

It was unexpected. 

He was eaten by octokittens.

He hadn’t reformed. 

He and Tim had been running through the lower levels, laughing as they dodged octokittens. Marius had stumbled, and Tim hadn't looked back as he reached the doors. Getting through, laughing, smiling.

Behind him, he heard Marius scream, he looked through the window, and Marius died.

The octokittens cleared.

There was no Marius.

Just a metal arm. 

This wasn't abnormal, the octokittens are apex predators after all. But Marius didn't reform. 

The arm sat on the floor. Bloody.

Tim doesn't know how long he cried.

How long he clung to Jonny.

He blamed himself.

The trip continued onward.

The ship was so, so silent without Marius.

Tim had thought it was quiet before. With Nastya gone and Aurora terribly silent.

(At first he had belived Nastya wrong. Aurora couldn't be dead.

Then it became obvious sooner rather than later, with the rot in the walls, the proof that the bio part of Aurora had died, that the Aurora talking wasn't the same. Was an AI, an ai that thought itself to be Aurora but _wasn't_. Tim tried to be kind to her but Aurora was dead.

Aurora was dead and they were living in her corpse.

He didn't blame Nastya for leaving.)

Without Marius here, without his jokes and ability to draw them all into a room, it was silent.

It was so, so silent.

It was lonely. Jonny quiet, grief stricken and despondent.

Tim can't remember the last time he saw him wearing anything but one of Nastya's coats. 

They reached the planet. 

Tim hugged everyone goodbye. 

He tried to seem as cheerful as he could, as joyful.

He didn't want their last interaction with him to be sad.

For all they knew, he was off to bring chaos, death, war, and music.

He’d be back in a decade or ten. He's be back safe.

It felt bad to lie, about something like this.

He hugged Jonny a bit longer than he intended, lingering a moment. “I love you,” Tim mumbled, pulling back. “Bye.”

Jonny nodded awkwardly patting his shoulder. He didn't look well. Looked like the last thing he wanted to do was let Tim leave but didn't have the energy to argue. “Bye.” 

Tim turned, stepping into the ship down, and was off.

It felt awful, to die so soon after Marius. But, he didn't hesitate. 

Jonny had Brian and Raph and TS. He'd be fine.

Marius’s death had cemented in the fact he needed to end soon.

If he stayed, he might be the last of them.

And Tim _refused_ to be the last.

As he looked around the pod, his right eye was a blur and his left far too in focus. It was giving him more of a headache than he already had.

He texted Jonny one last I love you, a blue heart, then in the group chat, a goodbye.

Taking the military base was harder than he expected, _much harder,_ because he kept missing everyone's heads, but Tim managed.

He got onto the largest gunship to ever exist, and kills everyone inside.

He might be the last person alive on this ship, but he isn’t the last Mechanism.

Tim sat in the cockpit and purposefully didn't do up his seatbelt.

After all, he was crashing this thing once the ammo runs out.

After all, if they did find his body, he wanted it to look like an accident. Needed it to look like an accident.

He didn't want to put Jonny through another knowing suicide.

And well, the first time he died it was because of a dumb mistake. Not closing the visor. 

His final being because of a seatbelt would be poetic.

A fitting ending to his tale.

Going on a rampage like this, it's exciting. It's brilliant. It's more fun than he’s had in a centuries. 

Stars shatter in his wake, planets burn, and Tim _laughs._

As the ammo dwindles, Tim picks a nearby space station, and crashes.

It's not as quick of a death as he planned, not painless either. Blood falls in buckets where metal skewers his chest.

Tim can feel death wash over him, a final, almost calm feeling. Like he was falling slowly. 

The pain is sharp, but dulls as he dies. As he calms.

This was it. (Maybe he'd even get to see Bertie again.)

All Tim feels at the end is relief. 

He wasn't the last.

And so Gunpowder Tim dies.

Tim might be dead, but he isn’t afraid.

  
  
  
  


_Our bodies are still and our blood is cold_

_The books are closed and our stories told_

_No happy ever after for a tale so old_

_Laid in blood when the story is done_

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> what ghost of 6th grade has possessed me to let me write so much.


End file.
